Canon Solutions America, Inc., a subsidiary of Canon U.S.A., announced today that their Intelligent Dealer Electronic Archiving System (IDEAS) with Scanless Automatic Filing Engine (SAFE™) technology now has the ability to digitize automotive deal jackets. IDEAS v2.0 enables Sales and Finance & Insurance (F&I) departments in dealerships to digitally archive their sales transactions, which can help to improve the efficiency and reduce the costs associated with storing and retrieving physical documents. The IDEAS deal jacket process also provides features to help ensure accurate and complete document sets.

“Similar to the way IDEAS indexes and validates warranty related information against a repair order, the new deal jacket process helps dealer management to sustain a consistent level of quality assurance because, functionally it is linked to a stock change report containing the deals,” said Tracie Sokol, vice president of marketing for the Enterprise Services and Solutions business unit of Canon Solutions America. “In the event of an incomplete document set in the deal jacket, an alert is routed to the IDEAS Validator for correction and the administrator is notified of the discrepancy.”

IDEAS brings an unprecedented document imaging solution to the automotive dealer industry that can help dealerships transition their Service, Sales and other departmental document workflows into a paperless model. IDEAS can save dealers a significant amount of processing and labor costs associated with the storage, printing, scanning, and shredding of documents. In addition to cost savings, minimizing the frequency of printing has many environmental benefits as well.

With today’s new car “wrap around” service model, in which vehicle maintenance is all inclusive, service department revenue is largely dependent upon the payment of warranty claims by their respective Original Equipment Manufacturers (OEMs). SAFE technology not only reduces paper consumption by automatically capturing documents electronically without the need to print and scan them, but it also systematically helps to ensure the integrity of the archive remains intact. This ultimately assists dealers in their effort to comply with their OEM’s requirements for complete document sets associated with the repair order process. Incomplete document sets can result in expensive warranty chargebacks.

“Having IDEAS is the difference between me paying my OEM and my OEM paying me,” said John Mantione, vice president and general manager for Fields Auto Group. “Because documents are captured electronically from the source and validated before a repair order is closed, the integrity of the archive is reliable due to the vast reduction of human error.”

For more information on how IDEAS v2.0 can help automotive dealers go paperless, please visit www.paperlessideas.net.

About Canon Solutions America, Inc. Combining the strengths of the former Canon Business Solutions, Inc. and Océ North America, Inc., Canon Solutions America provides industry leading enterprise services, advanced production print technology and large format solutions supported by exceptional professional service offerings. Canon Solutions America helps companies of all sizes to improve their business by increasing efficiency, controlling costs and becoming more environmentally conscious. A wholly owned subsidiary of Canon U.S.A, Inc. Canon Solutions America is headquartered in Melville, NY and has nearly 7,000 employees in over 150 offices across the country. For more information on Canon Solutions America, please visit www.csa.canon.com.